“Comrades in Life and Death” by Fritz Mauk, 1917.
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The following is excerpts of 27-year-old Danish-German stretcher-bearer Claus Juhl’s report of April 12, 1918 – today 105 years ago – on the frontlines of the Somme. Translated by myself:
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“Stretcher-bearer Thron, a decent man from Saxony, and I always shared our residence, whether it was good or bad. This was also the case on the 12th, when we were visited by a third comrade in our dug-out for two. We lay on our stomachs and played cards; we had pass the time with something.
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We played chess, and just as I was in the middle of playing a good game, a shell struck the trench. Immediately there were shouts for Samaritan stretcher-bearers, the cards flew in all directions, grabbing the medical kit and getting out was the only thing that mattered now, it was imperative use the time we had before the next shell landed.
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One man on watch for planes was wounded, a splinter had entered his ear and gone through his head. We found cover in a dug-out where we minimized ourselves as much as possible when another British greeting arrived. When he had stitched him up we each grabbed one of his arms and carried him out of the fire trench.
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The others had by now all went away to a sunken lane where we put him down. At such an occasion we were to be on duty, and that wasn’t always a pleasant task. I thought his wound would’ve been fatal, but that’s wasn’t the case; later he wrote to me from an ear clinic in Hamburg.”
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On the 13th a man came and told that he had found the horse-carriage driver Paegel, also from our unit, laying dead on the road to Albert. So I had to leave together with a couple of men to fetch him.
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He lay on the side of the road in a pool of blood, the bullet had entered through his side and hit his thigh, his artery had opened and he had bled out. If there had been people to aid him immediately he might’ve been saved.”